Reply #10: Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!

[Octafish]

Then there's the fellah who's about the only spy we ever got into Al Qaeda that Bushco decided to exposer, for whatever reason. Gee. Why would they do that? Do they WANT a war? Oops. I said a funny.

How the Pakistani double agent was ‘burned’ by the US

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: The unthinkable in the murky world of intelligence has come to pass: the cover of a double agent was blown while he was still active.

On 2 August, the Bush administration blew the cover of double agent Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan. A day earlier, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge had announced a new alert against an Al Qaeda plan to attack financial institutions in New York and Washington. When the New York Times pressed certain administration officials for more information, they disclosed to the newspaper that the information regarding the Al Qaeda plot had come from a recently arrested man in Pakistan named “Khan.” The New York Times published his name on Monday. The later editions spelt out the full name.

According to an investigation by Reuters correspondents Simon Cameron-Moore and Peter Graff, “The New York Times published a story on Monday saying US officials had disclosed that a man arrested secretly in Pakistan was the source of the bulk of information leading to the security alerts. The newspaper named him as Khan, although it did not say how it had learned his name. US officials subsequently confirmed the name to other news organisations on Monday morning. None of the reports mentioned that Khan was working under cover at the time, helping to catch Al Qaeda suspects.”

SNIP...

Khan had been secretly apprehended by ISI in mid-July and persuaded to become a double agent. He was actively helping investigators penetrate further into Al Qaeda cells and activities via computer, and was still cooperating when the “senior Bush administration” figure told New York Times’ Douglas Jehl about him. ISI told Reuters, “He sent encoded e-mails and received encoded replies. He’s a great hacker and even the US agents said he was a computer whiz … He was cooperating with interrogators on Sunday and Monday and sent e-mails on both days.” This proves that the Bush administration just blew the cover of one of the most important assets inside Al Qaeda that the US has ever had.

Prof. Juan Cole of the University of Michigan’s analysis is more daring, “The announcement of Khan’s name forced the British to arrest 12 members of an al-Qaeda cell prematurely, before they had finished gathering the necessary evidence against them via Khan. Apparently they feared that the cell members would scatter as soon as they saw that Khan had been compromised. (They would have known he was a double agent, since they got emails from him Sunday and Monday!) One of the 12 has already had to be released for lack of evidence, a further fallout of the Bush SNAFU (situation normal all fouled up). It would be interesting to know if other cell members managed to flee. Why in the world would Bush administration officials out a double agent working for Pakistan and the US against Al-Qaeda? In a way, the motivation does not matter. If the Reuters story is true, this slip is a major screw-up that casts the gravest doubts on the competency of the administration to fight a war on terror. Either the motive was political calculation, or it was sheer stupidity. They don’t deserve to be in power either way.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_8-8...

BTW: I LOVE Asian journalism! Thank you Mr. Hasan!